Vice President of Executive Support
Here at ACSI Headquarters, we recognize that many children in our urban member schools are doing well in their academic pursuits. Normreferenced testing indicates that there is annual improvement in the areas of math, reading, science, and language arts. Those schools that use the Stanford Achievement Test with the Bible Subtest note similar levels of improvement as well.
Researcher Susan Landry presented information at a summit on early childhood cognitive development in 2002. Her research, as well as that found in a publication by the Title I Directors’ Conference in 2003, reveals that children’s school readiness is optimized “if language, literacy, and other cognitive factors are attended to through quality programming in early childhood settings.” In contrast, “there is consistent documentation of a lack of school readiness for children with social, economic and physical risk factors…50% of kindergartners in the United States are from families with one or more risk factors for school failure. More than 33% of these children with only one risk factor will have reading scores in the bottom 25th percentile. Therefore, a major question is whether greater attention to language and early literacy in early childhood programs can better prepare children for school success.”
As educators, we know that building educational concepts upon a weak cognitive background produces little or no results and most often leads to failure and frustration on the part of teachers, parents, and students. Lack of school readiness for children from disadvantaged backgrounds due to social, physical, or economic factors often result from inadequate language and literacy experiences in early childhood, an inadequacy that is directly related to poor cognitive skill development.
We have launched the Gibson Cognitive Skills Test, an effective assessment component of the BrainSkills program, as a viable means for our urban member schools to tackle the challenge of poor cognitive skills development in children at risk. This test provides a baseline from which to compare future observations and cognitive progress.
This assessment is available to all ACSI urban member schools at no cost. This issue of The Meantime is dedicated to a complete analysis of the program and to instruction for participation. I invite you to read each article for further detail.
Reference
Landry, Susan. 2002. Supporting cognitive development in early childhood. Presentation at the Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development, Ready to Read, Ready to Learn: A Call to Leadership, Little Rock, AR, April 30, http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/early/cognitivedevsummit02/page_pg3.html#support.
The Meantime Volume 8 Number 1